My dirty life and times.

September 2006

September 26, 2006

“I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is...my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.”

There is no shame. No sense of moral failing. No real outrage. Not even the traditional blame directed toward the expendable incompetents around his Oval Office. There are no cover-ups, really. This has all played out before our tired old eyes, assisted by our compromised, unfaithful media.

There is no hiding from the truth, because there is no need. Falsehoods play better, and too many people simply don't care anyway. But so far, George Bush's comma in Iraqi history - to these tired eyes - follows one number and precedes three more.

September 25, 2006

The barricades have come down, the explosive-sniffing dogs are back in their kennels, and you can rent a room without a full body search at the Sheraton. The Clinton Global Initiative wrapped up last Friday afternoon in New York, sending 50 heads of state, one first lady and one former first lady, two ex-presidents, one almost president, several secretaries of state, a few movie stars and singers, and scads of pinstriped moguls and CEOs back into the real world - the one where war dominates, politics polarizes, and well-intentioned efforts often smash to tiny bits of well-funded flotsam on the sea of world turmoil and base human hatred.

For three days, CGI was a kind of dressed-up Woodstock for corporate generals and NGO dreamers - three days of peace, love and understanding keyed by groovy world music overtones to accompany slick Powerpoint and desktop video. Everybody got along (at least onstage - cable interviews were another thing entirely).

I was there all week, writing about the conference for the website I founded for the nonprofit world, onPhilanthropy.

Bloggers were plentiful. Bushes and Clintons mixed with Gores and Murdochs. And 215 pledges were made totaling $7.3 billion, all aimed at changing the world in one of four areas: environment, poverty, tolerance and health.
But in the words of one waggish bystander in the Sheraton hallways last week: this ain't no capital campaign.

Indeed not. Nor was it - like someone else suggested, an upscale Jerry Lewis Telethon (Ed McMahon was not present). The "pledges" were really was the Clinton team would prefer to think of commitments; multi-year promises to invest time and money and in-kind goods in making the world a better place. In some cases, the dollar value was extraneous to the importance of the commitment.
And although they were all "philanthropic," much of the total was not philanthropy - not as the U.S. Tax Code defines it, or really, how popular culture has always considered it since the earliest societies adopted alms giving to the poor.

The largest single commitment was Sir Richard Branson's pledge to use all the profits from his Virgin transportation businesses to fund research into alternative energy sources and technologies. But the estimated $3 billion was not a gift; Sir Richard will invest the company in other companies, including one he already owns, to try and move the developed world to better energy policies. Yet he could have put the money into his pocket, as the largest shareholder.

It's as if the Clinton team was determined to destroy the entire accepted parlance of the philanthropic world. Venture philanthropy? Not quite. Corporate philanthropy? In part. Foundations, nonprofits, NGOs? All part of the mix. Major gifts? Very major indeed, but not all "gifts."

Last week's Clinton confab was part of a discernible trend in "philanthropy" - that is to day, the rapid deconstruction of the accepted term. The reach and economic might of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the disposal of Warren Buffett's fortune, the creation of the loosely for-profit Google.org, Branson's "gift," and the kind of economic studies that come out of the World Economic Forum and the Milken Global Conference all point in the direction of blurring the boundaries between philanthropy, business, and nonprofits.

How this changes democracy is clearly a question we who live in democracies must ask. As major-league funding efforts to change the world cross international boundaries and move far outside the oversight of our individual elected representatives, does the average Joe maintain any say on the global commons? Does this mean we have to reconsider how we view tax-exempt status in the U.S.? Should we reconsider the legal strictures on American foundations?
And beyond that, does it work?

In the end, even a room with the heft of the Clinton Global Initiative has a hard time fixing the political realities that hinder real change in the world, that keep people dying from bad water and poverty and disease - ills that modern society can fix. Cynics blasted CGI as a staged love-in that broke down fewer boundaries than it appeared to. Part of that is fair criticism; no three-day conference can change the world.
But what it can do is get people talking, and get people thinking - and at a level where real change is possible. You can dismiss CGI as Clinton's government in exile, but you can't dismiss the very real commitments made there. And the sense that an American leader can and should set the stage for change - and commitment throughout the world.

September 23, 2006

Well, I lost - but not too much. Today was the company outing to Belmont Park, which is a small country town plunked into a corner of eastern Queens. A few months ago, a horse owner I know gave me a tour of the back stables; I had no idea that all that land was filled with barns, and roosters, and hay, and puddles and trucks. Man it was beautiful. Today, the kids leaned on the rail and picked horses by the names and the colors on the jockeys' silks. The rain held off, we chatted with friends and grabbed something from the grill. And we stood by the paddock and watched these beautiful, fragile animals. I'm not a racing guy, but I may be someday. Like Oscar Madison.

September 20, 2006

Arianna Huffington spit-takes her morning java this morning, scalding her tongue in the process:

What the hell was Bill Clinton thinking, inviting Laura Bush to deliver this morning's keynote address at his latest Global Initiative conference? Talk about speeching with the enemy.

Well, yeah - see, that's the point. I'm at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York the next three days, blogging it for my day-side gig (you can read the posts here - warning: no political vitriol will be found) and I can't help but buy into former President Clinton's premise that yeah, there can be forums and venues in which even the most politicized Americans can occasionally discuss changing people's lives.

Continues Arianna:

I realize that the goals of the Global Initiative
-- tackling poverty, AIDS, religious intolerance, and climate change --
are noble, and that the conference aims to avoid partisan politics. And
I've heard Clinton's lofty pleading:
"Shouldn't there be some forum where Americans and citizens of the
world can put aside there differences and find common ground."

But this is not a time for Bill Clinton to be acting like a former
president, floating above the political fray. This is a time for Bill
Clinton to be acting like a Democratic former president. There is a
world of difference between the two.

Yeah that peace, love and understanding stuff is great, but this is politics! Look, I want Democrats to throw the incompetent bums out. I think Mrs. Bush's husband is the worst President in the lifetime of anyone now living - and their grandparents. But a commitment of $10 million to something like PlayPumps matters. And the $2.5 billion that this Clinton conference - which requires commitments from participants or they're not invited - has pulled together in two years matters. Moreover, the partnerships matter - breaking down some of the barriers between governments, NGOs, and business is worth the time.

So, blogging here will be light the next few days so I can concentrate on blogging there, with my buddy Susan.

September 19, 2006

The power centers of baseball are California, the sunbelt and Florida, and the Caribbean - places where the endless summer sun allows for year-round play. Not the public housing towers, brick stoops, and snow-covered lots of Brooklyn and Queens. Yet today, a pair of New Yorkers (one born here, the other raised), two outer borough guys, are the toast of the baseball world.

When the champagne splattered everything in sight in the Flushing clubhouse, Willie Randolph from Brooklyn and Omar Minaya from Queens (by way of the DR) capped a terrific New York story along with the Mets first division championship in 18 years. Along with the Wilpons of Brooklyn, the Mets braintrust took a victory sip from the loving cup of appreciation, hoisted by a town that loves winners above all else.

Moreover, they realized the fruits of an aggressive, two-year climb to excellence. This is team is both loaded (Minaya) and together (Randolph). Sure, they have a long way to go this year. Yes, for this team merely aking the playoffs is hardly the summit. And you can be sure I fear that quick, five-game series of the first playoff round. You know they can handle the Padres, Dodgers, Phillies or Cardinals; they're easily the class of the league - and when entirely healthy, their 1-8 lineup is among the best in baseball. But a short series can bring down even the most titanic of lineups. Starting pitching will be vital - the bullpen is already the finest in baseball.

I loved the pics of Reyes and Wright, the two 23-year-old stars, celebrating in style among the fans. That's a nucleus - especially with Beltran. But don't discount the vets, Delgado and Valentin and even a gimpy Cliff Floyd.

But today, for the National League East champs, the pirze goes to two middle-aged, up from the streets, New York guys. Omar and Willie.

UPDATE: A wonderfully profane reaction from Steve Gilliard - a die-hard Mets fan who, shall we say, loathes that team across town along with a certain pair of afternoon WFAN talkies. He totally captures the frustration/relief quotient of the fans. Fred remembers a cab ride long ago, rooting for Doc Gooden his rookie season - and got the same feeling last night. Waiting for reaction from Mets fans Lance and James, among others.

UPDATE II: Lance introduces me to Mr. Met (as if I needed the intro!) and posts the best single photo of this great Mets season (tell the lad for me, Lance).

Just the usual die hards, the guys with the royal blue Mets jackets
with the inter-locking old English NY on the left breast and worn blue
Mets hats with the blue button on top. We would just nod to one and
other, no need to talk, we were stuck in the mud and as bad as it was
the organization was so much a part of our DNA that we could not get
away. We have been made fun of and mocked by fans of another team in
this town that no nothing of suffering and having their loyalty tested
time and time again. Way back when, the NY media loved us thought we
were “Amazing” then when hard times fell they turned on us just to
prove what a front running town this is. And with all that we have
stayed loyal to the blue and orange but what looked to be the last
straw, the one event that would cause a revolt among the loyal fans who
seemed to getting smaller and smaller may have been what saved the
franchise.

September 17, 2006

Sean smacks down my boomer sentiment and musical tastes in this week's comment (I haven't been as regular with these as I want to be, but them's the breaks). Here's the pull-quote:

As silly and ill-formed as the "review" is, it's a sentiment I share.
The Who are not "artists," (they haven't been a real band in about 35
yrs) they're an oldies act with a proper schtick, still peddling
Culturally Important Signifiers, like mini-operas, decades after they
were worn out. Someone like Jon Pareles should know better, but guess
what...he's a boomer himself, so The Who, like most of their ilk, get a
free pass (and this is from someone who adores the Who Sell Out).
Ditto, Springsteen the Stones, and anyone else you care to name.

What Haider's really stumbling on about is The Rolling Stone Effect:
where stars in general, but boomers esp. are slobbered over by critics
(witness Kurt Loder's 5-star review for Springsteen's The Rising, and
Wenner's 5-star suck up for Jagger's Goddess In The Doorway)eager to
keep those rock-is-eternal, the-sixties-are-still-with us myths alive.
(Prediction: new Who album--4 stars.) But the Sixties are long gone, and
no amount of false-boomer worship is gonna bring em back anytime soon.

He's right about the Rolling Stone rating system and the "giants of rock" hagiography it supports. But I humbly submit that I'm not part of that. Pete Townshend's not an oldies act, if you follow along. He is very much an artist (and as such, has released some god-awful stuff in the last three decades, but also some brilliant sides). The Stones? Springsteen? Yeah, they're masters at leveraging the past, selling to the incredibly power boomer demographic (I'm a last-minute boomer, by the way - just caught the wave). But they also come up with the hooks, and sometimes, they light it up along the way.

Finally, I'm not a Sixties guy - late 70s was the sweet spot for me, musically: the coming of age moment. It was a weird, wonderful time and the arena bands competed with the tiny clubs and destructive punk bands for my dollar. I was picky, too - the hippie shit left me cold. I hated The Dead, long drawn-out jams, drum solos. I loved power chords, short songs, stuff I could play myself. I've broadened since then (no weight jokes please) and could care less about the age of any musician; truth be told, I'm about halfway between Dylan and the Arctic Monkeys, generationally speaking.

And I agree with Sean and with Jason (who has said this before) that "Culturally Important Signifiers" in rock are pretty much dead; indeed, throughout pop music in general. It's just the music, in my ears, at my desk, on the train, or blasting through the speakers across from this old leather chair.

Note: If you care, you can see what I listen to on my office PC here - every track, artist, etc. I enjoy checking this out every now and then, but it doesn't count the iPod, the car, the home stereo.

September 15, 2006

Supplicants for the Republican nomination for President two years hence should pay attention to the current Senate race in New York. You misogynist lefties, listen up as well. Hillary Clinton, who deflected her anti-war primary like she would an Arkansas mosquito, is lining up gung-ho Yonkers Marlboro Man John Spencer in the general. This is gonna be a game of T-Ball, folks. No bookie will touch this action, though you can lay a fiver on just how far Senator Clinton will swat Spencer's gray, conservative cranium into rightfield. The unestimable Spencer is a stand-in for any conservative Republican man not named McCain or Giuliani - an incredibly accurate preview of, say, a Clinton-Allen matchup, a Clinton-Romney contest, or a Clinton-Frist tilt. Remember DeNiro in The Untouchables? Watch out for the splatter. Here's my preview: Spencer goes after Clinton with the usual stuff - liberal, carpetbagging, feminist, presidential wannabe anti-Christ yadda-yadda. Clinton smacks Spencer's noggin the length of the Montauk Highway. And then the Republicans (and many Democrats) continue to underestimate her (and the big guy) going into '08. Get yer peanuts here!

September 14, 2006

Sometime in the deep gray fog of the late 70s, I found myself in a great seat in the old Westchester Premiere Theater, a suburban shed where old-timey crooners in shaggy toupees shook their leisure-suited hips for the station wagon set. I was thinking: this ain't no Mudd Club, no CBGB. Until the bands came on. Jerry Lee Lewis. Carl Perkins. The Coasters. And the incredible Chuck Berry.

It was an oldies tour, plain and simple. Hits were played. Local musicians were hired. And the word went out on local radio that the "sounds of the 50s" would "turn back the clock" so that moms and dads could feel young again, and remember - for two hours - those carefree days of jukebox romance, sock hops and chocolate malteds. But I remember that Berry, playing with what seemed like a high school pickup band, rocked the joint, blasting those two-note jumped up blues chords far, far into the rafters.

If my math holds, he was an archaic 52 at the time - or nearly a decade younger than Pete Townshend was last night, when he took the stage out at Jones Beach and smacked 6,000 fans of all ages in the gut with some expansive new music and traditionally vicious power chords. And well more than a decade older than ole Bob Dylan, whose album is number one on the pop charts.

The boomer rockers are defying the gravitational pull of age in rock and roll, changing the genre entirely; now it's fun for the whole family. The Stones are the biggest touring act. Springsteen moves big-time units doing folk covers. Ray Davies cuts a masterwork. The New York Dolls get dirty again. Tom Petty's going' back down south. The Who's on tour and has a new album in the wings - we heard a seven-song mini rock opera from it last night, and it was definitely not "vintage" Townshend; it was new Townshend, using some of his trademark techniques to be sure - and telling the same basic story of growing up again - but the music stretched, his guitar playing has gone in new directions, his sense of rhythm has broadened. I loved the new stuff - and I bounced around to Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere until my back started to ache.

And of course, Dylan's number one. This bothers certain young critics. The Cornell Daily Sun's reviewer, Shuja Haider, has had it with fogey rock being praised by boomer reviewers (and presumably consumed by the generations that still pay for music).

Old folks, including every single commentator in the entertainment
media, tripped over each other’s canes praising Dylan’s
“comeback”—after thirty years. Over the next decade, Ol’ Man Dylan put
out an amazingly prolific one album, the universally adored Love and
Theft, wrote one bestselling autobiographical book, Chronicles, and was
the subject of one of legendary director Martin Scorcese’s only
documentaries, No Direction Home. Needless to say, there’s been plenty
of hoopla over all of it from the baby-boomer crowd, to the point of
getting nauseating. Maybe some of you have even heard it from your
folks.

Haider excoriates the traditional hagiography surrounding the classic rock greats, and claims that old people really don't get the whole modern music scene. Dylan's new record, he snarls, looks backward to older forms while pretending to be modern - the work of an old man. But the kid is playing it too cute; indeed he's not just a clueless innocent; that's just a stance, a Dylanesque pose. He obviously knows the Dylan canon (he claims Blood on the Tracks is overrated) - and should therefore know that Dylan has always looked backward, that his sense of musical evolution - American musical evolution - has powered his greatness as a songwriter.

Old man Dylan "is grasping back at a time before even he was born," he writes. But in the same review, he claims hip-hop as today's ascendent form. At last today's college kids are "smart enough to notice that Bob Dylan is a pop musician, who has much
more to do with the Spice Girls than with Yeats, and that’s what is
good about him, and if he has literary inheritors, they don’t publish
poems or even write songs, they rap."

Except that, er, they've been doing that since before Shuja Haider was born. Mainstream rap is almost 30 years old now, older actually than Chuck Berry's music was when I saw him play as a skinny, punk-obsessed teenager - and its antecedents are centuries old.

Last night, Pete Townshend extended the pre-punk My Generation into an exploratory jam that lasted many minutes past the two-minute classic. Floating discordant arpeggios off the two basic chords, he began to chant.

Hope I die before I get old...Hope I die before I get old...Hope I get old...Hope I get old before...

It wasn't one of his comic throwaway lines about age (and there were a few in the cool Long Island night) - it was a serious statement. Townshend has that creator's gleam this year - a year of dinosaurs emerging from the back catalog muck with new verve, and evolved ideas and perspective. I, for one, need those ideas. Hey kids, pay attention. Long live rock, I need it every night.

With the rise of rock and roll in the 1950 and 1960s pop music
reached a cultural apotheosis. Suddenly pop music was something other
than material for entertainment, it was in the center of a surging,
violent cultural upheaval. The music one liked was a source of tribal
identity the way religion and ethnicity once had been.

Definitely true, but no longer really; music is only a portion of it, and generally isn't even the main emblem in these media saturated times. So icons like Dylan and The Who go back to being artists, really - very famous and well-paid ones, but artists nonetheless. And the depth to which rock has suffused the culture makes that artistry viable; Jason again:

If the demographics of the baby boom have given boomer rock its
commercial staying power, the cultural politics of boomer rock have
given the music its cultural staying power.

Mr. Townshend has never been subdued onstage, but now he is more
clearly than ever the band’s vital center. Mr. Daltrey’s voice is
weathered, straining at high notes, and when he twirled a microphone on
its cord, it looked hokey. But Mr. Townshend’s guitar — in power
chords, wailing blues lines, probing modal phrases, architecturally
placed riffs and savage little trills — is still a bulwark and a goad.

Very true, and the audience clearly fed Townshend, easing a hunger he still feels four decades in. This from an interview in The Republican in Massachusetts:

This new, large-scale adventure is not intended
to suggest a last gasp. I simply wanted to make sure as many
people as possible heard about our new music, and got to
enjoy our old music, while Roger and I are still fit and
strong. While we can, we will always perform together now in
some shape or form. This is not an end, it really is a
beginning for us. We two old buggers have one of the great
banners of rock history to wave, and we are determined to
wave it, partly in memory of our two buddies who flew the
coop. Roger and I have each other, and that means more today
than it did when we first crossed angry paths as kids in
Acton in 1960, 46 years ago.

September 13, 2006

Two years ago, as President Bush was running for a second term, a catchy folk rock hook would filter down from the rafters of the halls Karl Rove packed with glassy-eyed yes-people who bought and consumed the Administration's lies uncooked, fully raw and filled with brain-killing organisms. The hook was written by John Hall and performed by his early 70s rock band Orleans. As it turned out, buoyed by lies and personal attacks, Bush was sadly Still The One, but the campaign was forced to quit playing the song after Hall complained.

But John Hall wasn't just another songwriter peeved at having his work stolen by a political movement he abhored - nope, John's a politician too. Democrats, liberal variety, environmentally movitated. Yesterday, Hall won his primary in New York's 19th Congressional District and with it the right to face Bush lackey Sue Kelly, a Congresswoman for whom the utterance of the word "aye" is directed solely by the political whims of Mr. Rove.

Now, my one encounter with John Hall came in 1979 when he organized the fantastic No Nukes concerts in New York City, which included performances by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, James Taylor, Carly Simon, The Doobie Brothers, Jesse Colin Young, Gil Scott-Heron, Tom Petty, and others. A grooving time was had by all, but the grassroots anti-nuke movement never really achieved that level of pop culture sophisitication since. Funny thing, though - Hall never stopped. From his Wikipedia bio:

He has been involved with Mid-Hudson Nuclear Opponents, who
successfully fought the siting of a nuclear power plant on the Hudson
River in Greene County. While living in Saugerties, John co-founded
Saugerties Concerned Citizens, and helped write the town's first zoning
law. When Ulster County announced plans for a 200 acre solid waste dump
on the historic Winston Farm, John led the opposition. This effort
culminated in his 1989 election to the Ulster County Legislature. In
the late nineties, after three successive school budgets were rejected
by the voters, John ran for, and was elected twice to, the Saugerties
Board of Education. His fellow trustees elected him president, and
budgets were passed each year of Hall's tenure.

So he thought globally and acted locally - a fine old 70s slogan he actually lived by (most of us didn't, though we wore it on t-shirts and the like).

Another strong point in his favor: Hall has the strong backing of two buddies of mine, Brendan and Lance, which counts for a lot. Brendan, who I've known for all of his four decades, had this to say on his terrific blog.

John Hall's victory speech was inspiring, and gave me hope that the
disastrous neocon social experiment may soon truly be coming to an end.

This
is a guy with brains, guts and a list of endorsers a mile long - most
notably Rep. Maurice Hinchey, the outspoken Bush critic and true
champion of the middle class. This is a first for Hinchey, having never
endorsed a congressional candidate before Hall.

The future looks bright.

As
Karl Rove and his ilk sharpen their knives to eviscerate a genuinely
decent American, as the neo-con money train chugs toward the Sue Kelly
campaign HQ, as Sue Kelly's campaign workers start planting signs and
start probing for weaknesses, as the whole status quo turns a hoary eye
toward Beacon and Hall's campaign HQ, the man himself stands ready and
anxious to join the fight.Sue Kelly, while she stood alongside Newt Gingrich, campaigned on promises of supporting term limits.

After
12 years of her brainless rubber-stamping of one Bush fiasco after
another, it's time to put an end to her limitless terms.

Lance also met Hall, and wrote: "He's got the stuff, not just to beat Kelly, but to be an exemplary legislator."

September 12, 2006

Americans do not honor their political enemies these days. "We're good, they're evil" is the simple default equation. Perhaps it's the crass, crude, jugular-targeted campaigns of the last few years. Or maybe just the obvious, inelegant lies. In any case, we forget that there are legitimate arguments to be had on all facets of policy - and that these worthy arguments are at the core of why we seek political power for "our side." Because we're right and want to do things better.

So bully for Christopher Buckley, ardent conservative heir, whose political principles (most of which I disagree with) clash vigorously with the party he thought he knew. It's an argument I respect, based in ideas I ca't support - but damn, if it's not a lie and worthy of my time. Courtesy of the Washington Monthly:

Today one has no sense, aside from a slight lowering of the
swagger-mometer, that the president or the Republican Congress is in
the least bit chastened by their debacles.

George Tenet’s
WMD “slam-dunk,” Vice President Cheney’s “we will be greeted as
liberators,” Don Rumsfeld’s avidity to promulgate a minimalist military
doctrine, together with the tidy theories of a group who call
themselves “neo-conservative” (not one of whom, to my knowledge, has
ever worn a military uniform), have thus far: de-stabilized the Middle
East; alienated the world community from the United States; empowered
North Korea, Iran, and Syria; unleashed sectarian carnage in Iraq among
tribes who have been cutting each others’ throats for over a thousand
years; cost the lives of 2,600 Americans, and the limbs, eyes, organs,
spinal cords of another 15,000—with no end in sight. But not to worry:
Democracy is on the march in the Middle East. Just ask Hamas. And the
neocons—bright people, all—are now clamoring, “On to Tehran!”

What have they done to my party? Where does one go to get it back?
One place comes to mind: the back benches. It’s time for a time-out.
Time to hand over this sorry enchilada to Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and
Joe Biden and Charlie Rangel and Harry Reid, who has the gift of being
able to induce sleep in 30 seconds. Or, with any luck, to Mark Warner
or, what the heck, Al Gore. I’m not much into polar bears, but this
heat wave has me thinking the man might be on to something.

My fellow Republicans, it is time, as Madison said in Federalist 76, to
“Hand over the tiller of governance, that others may fuck things up for
a change.”

My Dirty Life & Times

Tom Watson is a journalist, author, media critic, entrepreneur and consultant who has worked at the confluence of media technology and social change for more than 20 years. This long-running blog is my personal outlet - an idiosyncratic view of the world. "My dirty life and times" is a nod to the late, great Warren Zevon because some days I feel like my shadow's casting me.